At halftime of the LeMoyne men’s lacrosse game against St. Michael’s in the Northeast-10 Conference semifinals, the top-seeded Dolphins were up just two goals and had not scored since early in the second quarter.

But midfielder Tyler Sennett (Nottingham) said that head coach Dan Sheehan did not really say anything extraordinary in the locker room to try to fire up his squad.

“He doesn’t really need to say anything,” Sennett said of Sheehan. “The players that we are, we all understand how important it is coming out of the gate of the second half every single game. It can really set the momentum for the entire half.”

Indeed Dolphins midfielder Nick Blumer (Cicero-North Syracuse) scored just over two minutes into the second half to take a 5-2 lead as the Dolphins went on to an 8-4 win. With the victory, LeMoyne remained undefeated and moved on to the conference final at noon Sunday. The Dolphins will face Merrimack, which defeated Adelphi 13-12 in Friday’s other semifinal.

Fourth-seeded St. Michael’s fell to 10-5, 6-5 in the NE-10.

LeMoyne got out to a 4-0 lead early in the second quarter, thanks to two goals from attack Chris Button. The first was a behind-the-back dart on an extra-man opportunity with 6:50 left in the first quarter.

“Behind-the-back is just a regular shot for me,” Button said. “It’s nothing. I do it every day in practice. That was the only angle I had. Luckily, it went in or else Sheehan would have had my head.”

Button’s second goal of the day came about four minutes later and put the Dolphins up 3-0 late in the first quarter. Blumer then put LeMoyne up four when his shot bounced in front of the net and up into the goal.

The Purple Knights came back with two goals in the frame to pull within 4-2 at halftime. The first was scored by attack Pete Donnally, who finished the regular season with 37 goals, third-most in the conference.

He then showed his prowess on the defensive end when he forced LeMoyne defender Alex Cameron-Carter (Fayetteville-Manlius) to turn the ball over on a clear attempt. Donnally scooped up the ground ball, which ultimately led to a goal from Purple Knights midfielder Tim McDonald.

But Blumer’s second goal of the game followed by rookie midfielder Alex Westerhoff’s eighth goal of the season put the Dolphins back up by four. Sennett then scored twice in the fourth quarter to help put the game out of reach. It was the graduate student’s first hat trick of the season.

Despite the win, Sheehan was somewhat disappointed with his team’s play.

“Defensively today, I think the boys played maybe three-quarters of the game pretty solid ,” Sheehan said. “We missed a couple of opportunities. I think we made some mental mistakes defensively that gave them the opportunities that they scored on ... And then offensively I think we started, got a little bit of a run, and then we kind of took a nap for a little bit.”

Sennett agreed with this sentiment.

“What we have to really focus on in these last hopefully three games here is executing the whole 60 minutes. Sometimes we get some goals and we settle down, get comfortable, and think that everything’s just going to happen, but we can’t lower our level of play.”